When I blissfully escaped working in an office, I jumped into translation.

But that’s not where my heart is.

I have been “secretly” designing for some time. Recently, I showed some of my work to someone and she wanted to buy them and she ordered for more.

I really want to try this out and I’m doing my best to make it work.

My big question is how do you present yourself to others while you are still evolving? For exampledo you wait and then start blogging? What do you say on your call card? Are you cautious with what you tweet?

I know it’s too soon for me to have my own site but even in the case of a blogwhat picture do you give out to people?

A:

Don’t worry about any of this.

And forget about trying to ‘evolve’. Clients don’t want to hear about evolving.

Your best bet, for now, is to be two Magdas. Or even three Magdas. Most of us have two or three personas jostling inside us anyway.

You can be one Magda to one client, another Magda to another client. That is fun. And no one needs to know the difference.*

Try all the Magdas you want.

You want to design? You like design? You have a customer? You are farther ahead that most. (Customers make a business.)

On Twitter, be DesignMagda. Or MagdaDesigniste. Talk about design things there. Follow design people. Or better, follow people who buy design.

Then do a website or blog. You can do it for free, or for very little money, this afternoon. Don’t worry if you don’t have much to show yet. Show what you have. Start right now. Put up something new as often as you can. Re-design that bottle of shampoo you used this morning. You have a friend with a fascinating name? Design their stationery just for fun. Comment on designs you like, fix designs you hate.

Make it and put it out in the world. (Don’t worry, the world will not notice at first, so you need not be embarrassed. We can crash and burn in obscurity.) Don’t over-think, don’t over-plan.

The very act of publishing the site will teach you more than months of planning. It will show you what you like, what you’re good at, what you must do to be wonderful. (You may also find, “I like thinking about design, but I hate designing.” That is good to know. You discover such things by trying.)

I have websites in my head that I have been thinking about for years. That’s an embarrassing waste. Doing is better than thinking about.

While doing all this, you can also be TransLaterMagda on Twitter, and on the web. Different twitter, different web site, different Magda.

See which Magda gets the most attention. Or which Magda you like better. Or which Magda makes more money.

On one site, you have your photo with hair up, with glasses. facing right.

On the other site, your hair down, no glasses, facing left.

Go to moo.com, and create two sets of call cards. It will cost you 50 euro or so. In four days, you can have two new yous in your mailbox.

Don’t try — at least right now — to be one Magda who designs and translates and also plays the piano. That confuses clients.Keep your personas separate.

Perhaps you work on design on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. And on translation the other days.

Or you translate in the morning, design in the afternoon. In the evening, you play the piano.

Or maybe you pay the rent with translating, but thrill your soul with design.

If you think of something else, try that, too.

After a month, you may find you don’t need to translate any more. And you’re designing all the time. Or vice versa.

I know, the gurus say you need to focus. That you will dilute your energies by trying too many things at once. “It is better to dig one 10-meter hole than 10 one-meter holes.”

In freelancing, that’s wrong.

It is better to try things. It is better to diversify, find other streams of income, more than one path to glory.

Think of it this way: You do have a focus. It is on freelancing. You are solely and intently focused on making your own way in the world. You wake up every morning thinking of that. That’s your focus.

How you do it, that is just detail.

So try things. See what customers respond to. See what makes you excited. Of the things you’re trying, one will take on a life of its own. Go that way. Forget the others.

Don’t wait for perfection. Don’t wait until you’re ‘qualified.’ I don’t know what that means, anyway. Put it out there now. You can always fix it later. Or delete it or improve it.

Also, by trying many things, you may cause a spark by rubbing two different fields together in unexpected ways.

Perhaps you design T shirts with famous French quotations — or rude sayings — translated into Dutch.

Or “You need a website for your band, your company, your pickles in Hungary? I will translate AND design a specialized web site for you, uniquely tuned to the Hungarian culture.”

Invent a Magda. See what happens.

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* Readers have told me that in the Netherlands you can only have one freelance business at a time. Perhaps that means only one web site? Only one Twitter username? What if your website had two sides: Magda Designs, Magda Translations? Perhaps I shouldn’t be giving advice for people in the Netherlands.

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5 Comments

I’ve recently read a comment and I wish I could remember who said it, but it’s easier to create $1,000/month from 10 different steams than to create $10,000 from one stream. Still working to see if that’s possible, but it does seem right to me. Just got to get all those plates spinning. My question is: how do you then find time to do it all?
Thanks, Walt, for another good post.

Dawn:
I’m not sure that having ten 1,000 customers is any easier, exactly.

It is certainly less volatile. And you are not at the mercy of any one client, any one customer. Any one stream of income. A relatively small stream of income makes sense if you can set it up with minimum fuss, and keep it cranking with minimal maintenance.

Having one 10,000 source is clearly more efficient. But it takes a lot of kissing up. And that one 10,000 source can boss you around alot. And realize that it can disappear. So milk it while you can, and keep your eye out for new pastures.

For the record, I’m a translator and I love it, but I agree with your advice to Magda. Even within one freelance profession (i.e. translation), I think that it’s really helpful to cultivate multiple revenue streams, so that when one is down, hopefully another is up. For example most of my income comes from translation, but a significant (and growing) portion comes from teaching courses for translators, and from royalties on my translation business books. The beauty of an online course is that I can schedule a session for a time that I *know* my translation income will be down; for example after New Year’s or in August. And once you’ve written a book, royalties are the gift that keeps on giving! Even if you only do one thing for work, diversification helps smooth out the freelance income peaks and valleys.

I took me a while to write a comment on this post because I wanted to wait until I could figure it out. I have chosen to reply to your own comment because I want to tell you that I love translation too.

When I said that “not where my heart is”, I didn’t mean that I hate what I do. I am actually passionate about translation and working in this industry. My heart is right into my work. How would I have coped with freelancing, raising a kid and house management otherwise without any external help?

What had happened back then (November 2012) is that I didn’t have enough time to do anything creative the way I used to do. And so I was feeling that something was missing. I had a little girl to look after (and still do) and doing any artistic work was almost impossible.

But not anymore. She goes to preschool now and I can allocate time a bit differently. I still do almost everything on my own and I don’t get a lot of sleep but that’s okay.

I am also a translator who designs and I agree with much of the advice given. I find the two ways of working – designing and translating – are complementary and help to keep me mentally fit and agile in different ways. They are also both essentially about communicating.

I also keep my personas mostly separate – many first-time clients prefer to choose someone they perceive to be an expert in their field rather than a “Jack of all trades”, even if you are an expert in more than one field – but I do offer both services to some clients once we have got to know each other a little. If you price it well, clients save money (and time) by going to one person for translations and design and you get a larger commission than you would have received for one service only. It’s also a good way to build long-term working relationships.

You do need to find a sweet spot between pricing individual services and combined services so that you don’t undermine the cost of offering just one of your services. If you offer both services together, clients should still be aware that they are getting two services discounted (e.g. itemize them separately on your invoice). If clients perceive the second service as an added extra, they will be less willing to pay proper money for it when they need it on its own.

I find the proportion of translation and design work shifts with the projects I am working on. The wearing different hats on different days of the week approach doesn’t work for me. You only have to start deciding between your personas once both of them start to become more successful than you can handle on your own.

As a side note, I’m based in Germany and both occupations – translator and designer – are classified as freelance occupations under the tax legislation, and I don’t have to account for them separately. This status only changes once you set yourself up as an agency with staff.